Nash had always dreamed of being a real-estate mogul, while PCS Wireless bought, fixed and sold old cell phones.
Glamorous real estate or mundane phone reselling — which would you chase?
“I was running around the business world trying to find myself. I got distracted with ego and shiny things. I lost money in real estate, but losing money isn’t the problem. That’s a minor issue. I’ve always personally made money. The issue was my energy and focus was going to my other businesses and not to PCS.”
Nash didn’t get himself back on track, his team did.
About two years ago, the PCS executive team sat Nash down and gave him the “are we going to do this or not?” talk. (It’s “very important to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you,” is how Nash describes his team.)
There are myriad distractions in life; everybody has them.
What’s important isn’t the distraction, but how you deal with it.
And how comfortable your team would be if it was necessary to sit you down for “the talk.”
Maybe because I write not only this blog, but also creatively for clients, I tend to care about my responses.
The result is that every now and then I write something worth sharing beyond that email.
That’s what happened today.
A friend sent me an article.
My response was especially apropos considering the upcoming presidential election, which means months of being bombarded by candidates, talking heads, pundits, gurus, etc., on all forms of media.
That said, here is my self-described brilliant take on it.
Years ago there was one talking horse named Mr. Ed on TV. These days there are dozens of talking asses on all kinds of media.
Feel free to use it, although attribution is appreciated.
Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Let’s start with a question; is it possible to effectively manage electronically? Research going back to the 1940s shows that it’s not.
Managing is not a science; it is a subtle and nuanced practice, learned mostly on the job, through paying close attention to gestures and tone of voice. (…) Information technology can and should expand your range of communication, but cannot be a substitute for interactions that build trust, share vision, and enhance community..
“But we humans have found ways to not feel so bad about it when we behave a certain way — we basically disconnect these self sanctions.” (…)”If you were to go to church or temple, that’s a moral domain. People tend to not think about business as a moral domain.” — David Mayer, management professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business
For leaders to establish those policies, they’re going to have to fear the consequences themselves. (…) By paying attention to how the environment affects our choices, people can begin to treat their ethics as a skill to develop and continue developing, even as students graduate, enter the workforce, and become executives.
But [after two decades] Beth Brooke was growing tired of hiding, particularly after being tapped to head Ernst & Young’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
After reading Alexander Haislip’s post, I scurried around and removed the “CEO” from as many profiles as I could find/remember.
Back in 1999 I started RampUp Solutions I called myself “founder” and I was happy with that, but I kept being told I should use ‘CEO’, so I did. (Hey, even smart people can give poor advice.)
However, I was never comfortable with the title because I’ve worked with dozens of CEOs and knew that I didn’t/couldn‘t do what they do.
Not only did not, but could not.
Now, thirteen years later, my gut reaction has been confirmed; not only the reaction, but the reasons.
Ask yourself: would you still be CEO if it were a $100 billion business or would you require what’s euphemistically called “adult supervision?”
Considering what passes for a $100 billion business these days you may want to add ‘sustainable’ to the description.
There is nothing wrong with bringing in a “real” CEO and learning the ropes—think Larry Page and Google—but assuming a title of which you aren’t really capable smacks of a five-year-old dressing up in mommy’s/daddy’s clothes.
I hope Haislip’s and my post inspires you to find the time to expunge CEO from your social profiles and other places, including your business cards.
You might also want to take a hard look at other company titles, especialy on the executive level.
Option Sanity™ reduces pretension. Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning. Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
We glorify top managers, print their pictures in newspapers and magazines, praise their decisiveness and vision, give them awards and treat them like superstars. All they’re guilty of – the poor bastards – is believing the BS we write about them.” –Freek Vermeulen, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School and author of “Business Exposed: The naked truth about what really goes on in the world of business”
Good press starts at a tender age, even before walking or talking, and continues, getting louder all the time.
Eventually, for some, it drowns out any bad press or critical comments, so they hear only the positive glowing phrases used to describe them—and they believe.
As the good press gets louder and belief becomes stronger anything resembling balance is jettisoned and what emerges is a tyrannical ego seated on a throne of hubris.
You often find that throne at the desk of a positional leader and the ego occupying it wreaking havoc in the name of leadership—and the higher the position the more extensive the havoc.
We are all living the cost of the hubris that occupies so many corner offices in the world’s financial community, not to mention the halls of politics, but hubris has been wreaking havoc for centuries.
Long before hubris destroyed our economy and forever changed our world, its results were obvious in the failed acquisitions so prevalent over the last few decades.
Yesterday, I quoted Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel, whose comment is perfectly applicable to any age or position, “No matter how successful you are, stay humble, stay nervous, and don’t believe your own press.”
Our world would be better if more leaders, from parents to teens to CEOs to politicians, stopped believing their own press.
Rupert Murdoch is in making news as opposed to reporting it, so I thought I’d see if any of his past comments were applicable to the present situation. I found six statements that reflect a mindset that’s particularly interesting in light of what’s currently happening.
I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up, but you can’t do that on television. It’s just not on.
Does that mean that anything that proves provocative is OK?
I’m a catalyst for change. You can’t be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place.
It sounds as if a lot of the people affected had enough scar tissue and didn’t really need Murdoch’s organization to increase it.
I try to keep in touch with the details… I also look at the product daily. That doesn’t mean you interfere, but it’s important occasionally to show the ability to be involved. It shows you understand what’s happening.
Makes you wonder just how “in touch” Murdoch was with the hacking details.
You can’t build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.
I wonder if Murdoch would say the “you” referred to him or use it as a get out of jail free card by making others responsible.
Our reputation is more important than the last hundred million dollars.
I’d say it’s more like many hundreds of millions between the direct damage and the possible loss of BSkyB.
The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
If Murdoch really meant this, he would step forward and take responsibility, instead of damage control—but I’m sure not holding my breath.
Did you know that when Roman generals rode through the streets for their victory parade they were required to have a person in the chariot who kept repeating “Remember, you are not a god.”
Twitter, Facebook, TechCrunch, blogs and other media are the modern version of the victory parade.
What we are missing is someone to remind them, “You are not infallible; you are not a god.”
Many of the news reports and stories I read leave me with the same unanswered question, ‘why’?
Why do people with everything do such incredibly stupid things?
Why do they risk losing it all—and often do?
To paraphrase a question, what’s in it for them?
And more importantly, what can be done about it?
Bill George, Professor of Management Practice and Henry B. Arthur Fellow of Ethics at Harvard Business School wrote an article on the subject. Focused on positional leaders in a variety of circumstances it considers “Why Leaders Lose Their Way,” but his solution, while correct, is old and tired. Not to mention that he’s preaching to the choir—those who listen are on the right path already and those who should won’t.
While George’s approach offers nothing new, Dave Balter, founder of BzzAgent, provides a much more compelling story that should provide a wake-up call to anyone who’s ego is on the way to, or has already gotten, out of hand.
Interestingly, there is a ‘why’ on the other side of the coin, too, but it’s one that goes unnoticed, buried in positive actions and the (well earned) praise sung by the media.
I’m referring to the actions of people such as Angelina Jolie, Bono and now, Matt Damon. If you aren’t aware of the role he’s created for himself, read about it. It surpasses by far anything else he’s taken on before.
Jim Stroup is one of my favorite leadership commentators; additionally, he writes one of the most erudite blogs in cyberspace. He was kind enough to offer this post to introduce you to his thinking. He is well worth any time you spend with him. I highly recommend a subscription to his blog as well as his book, Managing Leadership, which I reviewed here.
Summarizing the fallacy of individual leadership
I’ve covered a lot of ground over the past several years on Managing Leadership. I’ve talked about everything from free-market capitalism to history – even physics. But at bottom, it all has been about management and leadership; in particular, how the former is a proper and honorable individual undertaking in an organization, and how the latter is, not to put to fine a point on it, neither.
I will be talking more about what leadership in an organization really is, and how to manage it at my blog, but for this post, I’d like to take a moment to summarize the fundamental problems with the current state of things – the intractable contradictions inextricably woven into the concept of individual leadership:
It is inescapably about the person – not the work. It encourages personal ties which rise to the level of cultishness. It describes these ties as existing between the “leader” and his or her “followers” – not among colleagues and their businesses or organizations.
It suggests that individual leadership can be developed. There is, however, no proof whatever for this contention.
It fails to connect leadership (especially inspirational or charismatic) with successful business management.
It is filled with fallacious proofs consisting of examples that seem to support it, but which ignore the multiples of examples that satisfy the posited parameters while still failing to support it, or that even contradict it.
Neither its presence nor its potential can be predicted.
It encourages adults to attempt to develop personality characteristics that may not be natural to them. This has not been demonstrated as possible; it may actually be harmful.
It further encourages adults to focus on developing these personal characteristics in order to attain a personally aggrandizing persona, rather than to improve their ability to contribute as part of a team to organizational work.
By seeking a universal individual leadership model it fails to see how individuals in “leadership” positions learn on their own to evaluate what’s working, what isn’t, and how to adapt to keep things going or to improve them.
It is irretrievably run through with contradictions – the most obvious being those among the widely touted and disparate lists of “essential” leadership traits.
It (often actively) encourages unaccountability by its recourse to superlative leadership skills and “intuition” beyond the ken of the rest of us.
As a really rather obvious result, it is irrelevant, distracting, and thus destructive on numerous levels.
Flowing inevitably from the above, in its lack of system, resistance to definition, and inability to develop practitioners or predict outcomes, it is inherently unprofessional.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now read Jim’s complimentary post, Exuding something, that looks at the flip side of individual leadership.
Easily among the most disagreeable aspects of the generally disagreeable concept of exceptional individual leadership is the noxious notion of “followership.”
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
What happens when you create a fast growing business that has unicorn potential, but it doesn’t fit with your personal dream?
Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Good press starts at a tender age, even before walking or talking, and continues, getting louder all the time.
Rupert Murdoch is in making news as opposed to reporting it, so I thought I’d see if any of his past comments were applicable to the present situation. I found six statements that reflect a mindset that’s particularly interesting in light of what’s currently happening.
Did you know that when Roman generals rode through the streets for their victory parade they were required to have a person in the chariot who kept repeating “Remember, you are not a god.”
Jim Stroup is one of my favorite leadership commentators; additionally, he writes one of the 
